Friday, October 13, 2017

Who Is Better At Assessing Surgical Risk?

JAMA Surgery has a paper asking who is better at assessing surgical risk: internal medicine residents or surgery residents. The answer is obvious--neither. It is anesthesiologists who are best equipped to determine the potential for postop complications. Duh. It is what we do every day. Patient safety is like 95% of our thought process. It's practically in our DNA. It is even in the title of this blog, "There are no substitutes." We train for years and years learning how to guide a patient safely through their surgeries. So the question about whether internists or surgeons are better at deciding patient safety after surgery is ludicrous. The anesthesiologists are the guardians of surgical patients.